Cites & Insights Crawford at Large Libraries • Policy • Technology • Media Sponsored by YBP Library Services Volume 6, Number 12: October 2006 ISSN 1534-0937 Walt Crawford Those journals still publishing in 2000, a minimum of Open Access Perspective Part I six years, can be considered lasting titles. Some elec- tronic scholarly journals started years before.. Pioneer OA Journals: While 1995 may seem like ancient times for the Web, Mosaic (the first widely-available browser) was well es- The Arc of Enthusiasm, tablished by then. Most academic libraries had Internet access, many used various forms of electronic commu- Five Years Later nication, and more than a few were building Web sites. They weren’t generally called Open Access journals in Inside This Issue 1995: If that term existed before 2001 or 2002, it cer- Old Media/New Media: Books, Bookstores and Ebooks..... 6 tainly wasn’t the standard name for free online schol- Interesting & Peculiar Products ....................................... 12 arship. But there were examples of free online Pioneer OA Journals: Preliminary Additions from DOAJ . 14 scholarship, some dating back to 1987. In the May SciFi Classics 50 Movie Pack, Part 2 ................................ 22 2001 Cites & Insights, I explored the question: “Do Fifty-seven of the 104 journals in the 1995 ARL Directory free scholarly electronic journals last?” had Web or Gopher addresses (URLs). Seventeen of those The title of that essay, GETTING PAST THE ARC OF addresses still worked in early 2001. Finding the others proved fascinating and frustrating. After working with a ENTHUSIASM, revealed one finding I had suspected variety of tools, I found Eureka and Google most useful. going in: It was not unusual for one of these pioneer- The RLG Union Catalog via Eureka provides a good first ing efforts to start out with a bang, fueled by the en- cut answer as to whether a journal has been noticed by thusiasm of its founders, and fade away in an “arc of academic libraries or the Library of Congress. For nine- enthusiasm,” with articles and the journal itself disap- teen titles, not a single record could be found, a bad sign pearing after a few years. for academic significance. For most of the others, I In the course of the 2001 essay, I casually as- could click on a cataloged Web address to locate the serted a definition that’s been cited elsewhere: If a journal itself—and most of those addresses worked. Where Eureka failed (through lack of records, lack of journal lasts at least six years, it can be considered a URLs, or dead URLs), Google usually succeeded—not “lasting” title even if it later goes out of business. More always in finding the journal itself, but finding evidence than half of the open access journals founded in 1995 that the journal did exist at one time. or before that were refereed and “visible” (see below) Early free electronic journals have done better than might were still publishing six years later; that’s a good re- have been expected. Eighteen were misdescribed or have cord. I thought it would be interesting to see how changed direction. Ten are missing in action—or have they’re doing after five more years. Thus, this update. nothing but e-mail addresses, which makes them invisible to the larger scholarly community. Five are so confusing Background that their status is unclear. Twenty seen to have fallen prey to the arc of enthusiasm: after a few good years, the jour- The original article is still available (citesandin- nals have died or become comatose. Two journals ceased sights.info/civ1i5.pdf). These extracts describe how I for reasons other than declining interest. arrived at the original findings. Twenty-one journals still publish a small but steady flow ARL’s Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters and Aca- of manuscripts. Twenty-eight journals still publish sub- demic Discussion Lists for 1995 includes 104 items that stantial numbers of refereed articles. appear to be free refereed scholarly electronic journals. Cites & Insights October 2006 1 Of 86 titles that were available as free refereed scholarly ¾ Oddities, cases where I wasn’t sure what to journals in 1995, 49 (57%) still publish six years later. make of the situation. Originally five journals. Given the difficulties of coordinating refereed journals Two of the five have become visible and and the problems inherent in “free,” that’s a remarkable record. moved to the Arc of Enthusiasm, leaving three oddities. Reviewing this material, I find that three of the 86 ¾ Arc of Enthusiasm, cases where I was able to titles actually began publishing in 1996 or later. Those find the publication in 2000, 2001, or 2006, three have been eliminated. but where the publication lasted less than six Checking the Survivors years. Some journals originally in this cate- This time around, I wasn’t working from a published gory have restarted and are now in Surviving list, which means I didn’t have the original URLs. In- Pioneers; others lasted six years or more, a re- stead I used three freely available tools, in this order: spectable life for a journal, and are now in ¾ The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Ceased Pioneers. Unfortunately, several of the probably today’s primary access point for fourteen journals now in this category don’t tightly-defined OA journals (scholarly, refe- have visible archives (or at least I couldn’t reed papers, free to download and copy). find back issues). ¾ Worldcat.org for journals not present in ¾ Ceased Pioneers, eleven open access journals DOAJ, using a phrase search for the journal that lasted at least six years but have no recent title, checking URLs in the Details view or on content. library catalog pages. ¾ Surviving Pioneers, journals that began no ¾ Google, again using a phrase search, for cases later than 1995 and have content as recently where no Worldcat.org links yielded live re- as 2004, with articles freely accessible. This sults. (There were no cases where World- combines the former “small successes” and cat.org didn’t yield a result of some sort.) “strong survivors” categories. I’m sad to say I skipped 18 “misdescribed” publications because that eight of the 51 journals originally in they were either not journals, not scholarly, or were these categories or that moved into these priced (not free online) in 2001. I also skipped two categories disappeared before 2004—and journals known to have ceased for reasons other than three more noted immediately below (“special the arc of enthusiasm (one because the publisher, cases”) no longer qualify as open access (and DEC, was purchased by Compaq, the other because in two cases may have been misdescribed the online version didn’t work out). originally). That’s about a 25% failure rate— I checked ten journals flagged as “Mysteries” in not ideal, but not terrible. 40 of the original 2001 because “I was unable to find any working Web 86—46%—have survived as OA journals for presence for them as e-journals in early 2000 or early at least a decade. 2001.” All ten are still mysteries. I could not locate Journals within each category are listed alphabetically archival issues in nine cases. In the tenth case with notes on publication patterns (usually providing (SPEED) there appeared to be four issues all prior to number of issues and number of apparently formal 1997—but attempting to reach them froze my PC, so articles each year). I also note which of the three web I’m not willing to assert that they’re actually there sources first provided useful access: DOAJ if not I no longer believe the distinction between “small stated, WorldCat, or Google. (I have no doubt that successes” and “strong survivors”—based on an arbi- WorldCat would have provided access in all DOAJ trary cutoff of 10 or more refereed papers per year— cases and that Google would provide access in nearly makes sense. In some narrow fields, half a dozen good all cases.) papers each year represent a significant contribution. Publication patterns beginning in 1993 appear as This year’s discussion looks at long-term avail- year: issues/articles or, for journals that don’t have is- ability for dead and live journals and breaks them into sues, year: articles. For 2006, partial results as of the five groups: first week of September appear [in brackets]. “Many” ¾ Special Cases, journals that don’t currently appears when there are dozens of articles or article- qualify as open access. equivalents in a year and the articles aren’t numbered. A “+” after the number of article-equivalents indicates Cites & Insights October 2006 2 that the journal includes significant amounts of other patterns. Some of these could come back to life, to be material such as book reviews. Some of these journals sure—but most seem to follow a pattern that becomes began earlier than 1993. familiar. “Ceased” indicates that the journal explicitly When a live archive is available, I note “Full ar- ceased publication as opposed to fading away. chive back to” and the earliest date apparently avail- Asia-Pacific Exchange (Electronic) Journal [APEX-J]. World- able (in bold if earlier than 1993). In most but not all Cat. 1994: 2/4; 1995: 2/5; 1996: 1/1. No visible archive. cases (not annotated), early articles have been refor- Dogwood Blossoms. Google. 1993: 5/12; 1994: 4/30; 1995: matted in HTML—but there are some ejournals where 2/10. Full archive back to 1993 (with glitches). fairly recent issues are still ASCII-only (and at least EJournal. WorldCat. 1993: 3/3; 1994: 4/5+; 1995: 2/3; one where the archive is a Gopher site).